Tories promise tough laws to deport foreign criminals

BRITAIN will use tough new laws to deport foreign criminals who commit serious crimes, Theresa May revealed yesterday.

Crimials are allowed to stay in the UK such as Aso Mohammed Ibrahim and Vladymyr Buchak

The Home Secretary warned that Britain’s streets are being made more dangerous by immigration judges who are subverting democracy by failing to deport foreign criminals.

Judges have controversially bowed to European human rights diktats to let criminals stay in this country.

But Mrs May is taking the judiciary to task for not following guidelines introduced last year, which make it clear that the “right to family life” is not absolute.

Government figures show 177 ­foreign criminals avoided deportation in 2011/12 after convincing judges of their right to a family life in Britain. They include Vladimir Buch­ak, a Ukrainian who paid eastern ­Europeans with UK residency rights up to £3,000 to marry Africans so they too could stay. He has been allowed to remain because he has two children here.

A Jamaican drug dealer was allowed to stay after his release from prison when the High Court said his absence would harm his nine-year-old son, who has a hyperactivity disorder.

And Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, an Iraqi Kurd, who killed a 12-year-old girl in a hit-and-run incident in Lancashire, was allowed to remain after ­serving just four months in jail because he too has a family here.

Mrs May said the actions of some judges were “not acceptable” and vowed to stop them. An immigration Bill, to be published later this year, will give full legal weight to Ministers’ demands that foreign criminals should not be able to dodge deportation under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

The right to a family life under ­Article 8 must be ­balanced by the need to protect the public from dangerous criminals.

The new law is expected to state that Article 8 allows deportations to prevent “disorder or crime”, meaning judges will be forced to take that into account when considering appeals.

Mrs May said the actions of some judges were “not acceptable”

I am determined that Article 8 must not stop us deporting dangerous foreign criminals.

Theresa May

Restrictions could also be included in the new law on migrants coming to Britain from Romania and Bulgaria.

Last summer the Home Secretary changed immigration rules to say that foreign criminals should be deported if they were serious or persistent offenders.

But while the rules were backed by the Commons, they do not carry the full weight of law and are often ignored by judges.

Mrs May said: “The European ­Convention on Human Rights is clear. There is a right to a family life, but that right should be balanced with the wider public interest in controlling immigration and protecting the ­public.

“That’s why we introduced new immigration rules last year. Those rules were debated and passed unanimously by the House of Commons.

“So it is not acceptable that some immigration judges are denying the democratic and legal validity of them. I said at the time that if the courts did not heed the changes to the rules, I would introduce primary legislation to force them to do so. That is exactly what I now intend to do.